Nightmare City Read Online Free

that, it just didn’t happen.
    Except that she was breaking down now on the phone.
    “Tom, you have to hear me! You have to!” she said, her sobs almost overwhelming the words.
    Tom practically shouted back at her, “I hear you, Mom! I’m right here! I’m right here! I can hear you! Where are you? What’s the matter?”
    “Oh, Tom, please!” Mom cried, almost hysterical now—and Mom never got hysterical, never. “Please answer me!”
    Tom clutched at his own hair in frustration. “Mom, where are you? What’s wrong? Tell me where you are! I hear you!”
    And then there was a sound that made Tom’s heart squeeze tight in his chest. That double beep.
    He looked at the readout on the phone: Connection lost .
    “No!”
    Tom shouted out loud in his frustration. Quickly, he pressed the Redial button. The phone sang out its series of tones and then began ringing again. It rang twice . . . three times . . .
    “Come on!” Tom willed his mother to answer.
    Where was she?
    In the middle of the fourth ring, the ring broke off.
    “Mom?” Tom said eagerly.
    “You’ve reached Ann Harding’s cell phone. Please leave a message after the tone.”
    Her voice mail!
    The tone sounded. Tom started talking rapidly, urgently. “Mom, it’s me. Listen. Where are you? I heard you before but you couldn’t hear me. Everything’s so bizarre here. Call me back as soon as you get this! Okay?”
    He hung up. His unsteady hand slowly fell to his side.
    What. Is. Going. On?
    Has to be an explanation , he thought. Has to be, has to be, has to be. There always is .
    But that horrible, horrible sound of his mother’s frantic crying came back to him and he realized: even if there was an explanation, it wasn’t going to be good.
    Tom stood there, thinking, trying to figure out what to do next. His eyes moved slowly around the front hall. His gaze traveled over the large photo portrait that hung on the wall—right next to the hall closet so it was the first thing you saw when you came in. It was a photo of the three of them: Mom, Burt, and Tom. A blowup of the portrait they’d had taken for the church directory. Mom was sitting in a chair. Burt was behind her to the right, wearing his uniform. Tom was in a jacket and tie behind her to the left. Each of the brothers had one hand on Mom’s shoulder. Tom’s glance moved past the framed photo to the small wooden cross that hung beside it—then onto the sidelight beside the door, to the pane that held the gold star sticker that marked this as the home of a family that had lost someone in the war.
    Tom gazed absently at the star for a minute—and then the focus of his gaze shifted and he looked through the glass to the outside.
    The marine layer had thickened out there. The fog had crept in closer to the house. The whiteness hunkered and swirled over the edge of the grass. The end of the driveway was misted over, almost invisible.
    Tom stared out, trying to think. He saw the fog shift a little.
    Someone was standing there!
    There was a woman standing in the street, standing in the mist, just at the very end of the driveway. The first human being he had seen all morning. She was a small woman, thirty or forty years old. Pale and thin. She was dressed in light colors—a white blouse, a tan skirt—so that she almost blended into the swirling white atmosphere. She didn’t move. She didn’t do anything. She just stood there, staring. Her face was expressionless—weirdly blank—almost completely empty of any feeling, as if she were sleepwalking or as if . . . as if she weren’t alive at all.
    Moment after moment, she didn’t move. She just went on standing there, standing very still, her arms down by her sides. Standing and staring at the house. Staring straight at the sidelight. Staring straight at Tom.
    Tom felt as if his heart had stopped beating. He gapedout at the woman, his phone forgotten in his hand. The woman didn’t move. The dead expression on her face didn’t change. But now